Don Garber, Major League Soccer commissioner, visited St. Louis Monday to meet with prospective expansion team owners Jim Kavanaugh, World Wide Technology CEO and Carolyn Kindle Betz and members of Enterprise Holdings’ Taylor family.
Corporate St. Louis showed up in grand style to dine with Garber at the Four Seasons and he labeled the gathering “fantastic and remarkable.”
Then, he put the touch on the hopeful future owners and members of the business community.
“It would really help their bid if they had stadium naming rights and a jersey sponsor in place,” Garber reportedly said.
“So there is a specific level of financial corporate support.”
Hmmmm. The Taylors and Kavanaugh are willing to pay whatever the exorbitant expansion fee will be and build a stadium on pretty much their own dime. Yet, that isn’t enough.
It seems like St. Louis is doing all it can to land a MLS team and here comes another financial request; another MLS money hurdle. Garber also said the naming rights issues need to be fixed “quickly.”
I’m sorry, but it sounds like Kavanaugh and the Taylors are in the midst of a shakedown.
My guess is the 27 MLS owners are more interested in the expansion fee than they are the naming rights money. This is not the NFL where stadium naming rights are valued at tens of millions of dollars. A stadium name or jersey sponsor will not prove St. Louis’ zeal for soccer.
Many St. Louisans want a team and the prospective owners certainly deserve a team.
They don’t deserve to be taken advantage of by a commissioner and a league that has never proven that the majority of its teams clear a profit.
As for the stadium name, how about “Better Together Stadium?”
It could be bought and paid for by billionaire busy-body Rex Sinquefield. His Chess Club of St. Louis could be the jersey rights holder, as well.
If Sinquefield’s Better Together effort is successful, maybe Kavanaugh and the Taylors will wish the new stadium was in St. Charles County.
A hefty percentage of St. Louis County residents will be moving west across the county line if a merger is crammed down their throats based on votes from out-state Missourians.
MLS’ neo-Nazi problem
Just as the MLS regular season opened on March 2, the Huffington Post reported on what it calls “a dirty little secret familiar only to MLS fans.”
It has been discovered that a vocal number of New York City Football Club fans are, as the Huff Post described, “far-right extremists, skinheads and outright white nationalists.”
Among those who have frequented games are Irvin “Irv” Antillon, a member of Batallón 49, a majority-Latino skinhead gang with connections to white nationalist and other far-right organizations.
Antillon was in Charlottesville, Va., for the Unite the Right rally in 2017, and he reportedly was a member of a militant wing of the Proud Boys, “a chauvinist and violence-prone men’s club founded by Gavin McInnes.”
The Huff Post wrote, “From the beginning, leftist and activist NYCFC fans have contacted members of the pro soccer team’s front office, offering evidence of Antillon and others’ white nationalist ties, asking management to purge the fan base of its small but noisy white nationalist contingent and crack down on supporter groups harboring and enabling them.”
The online publication obtained emails that the team has been aware of the problem since 2015.
As the MLS season opened, Commissioner Garber, the same guy who was bold enough to seemingly extort more money from St. Louis’ deserving ownership group on Monday, gave this tepid response to the NYCFC racist fan problem.
“Our job is not to judge and profile any fan,” Garber told reporters.
“It is to manage how our fans are both interacting with each other, and how they’re behaving in our stadiums.
“The last thing this league is going to do is start getting into profiling who people are and what their backgrounds are. That is a slippery slope. That’s not something we’re going to engage in.”
Obviously, a sports league cannot screen individuals who purchase tickets and attend games. But MLB, the NFL and NBA would take stronger – and quicker – action if neo-Nazis in the stands become a problem.
Two fists equal one knee
In determining if a receiver has made a catch in the end zone or before going out of bounds, one rule is “one knee down equals two feet down.” Shorter version. One knee equals two feet.
Fifty years after John Carlos and Tommie Smith stood on the medal podium in Mexico City and raised black glove covered fists, they both stand with Colin Kaepernick and his decision to kneel during the national anthem.
“Mr. Kaepernick is one of those individuals who step out from the norm and make their presence known because no one else is doing it,” the 73-year-old Carlos told the New York Daily News last week.
“It was a very courageous thing he did and I support him.”
Carlos, who now resides in Atlanta, first met Kaepernick in 2016 when both were in New York. Soon afterwards, Kaepernick was seeking his advice.
“He wanted to know what it was like for me and Tommie 50 years ago,” Carlos said.
“I told him it was pretty much the same scenario he’s in now, that only the dates have changed. I told him I’m sure it was the same for Jack Johnson, and for Paul Robeson, and Jackie Robinson and anyone else who came before us. The players change but the game stays the same.”
Unlike Carlos and Williams, who suffered unemployment and were ostracized by most American sports fans, Kaepernick had earned $14 million before he was chased out of the NFL for his peaceful and legal protests. He also won a settlement from the NFL, which ended a civil case against the league for collusion.
Carlos is convinced Kaepernick is not in it for the money.
“I think he did it for the same reason Tommie and I did it. For his children and for individuals who come after him. Maybe someday people will realize that,” Carlos said.
“All those years that he sat out no one was concerned about the millions of dollars he was losing. Nobody was worried about the sacrifice he was making. So now it’s not right to criticize him for settling the lawsuit.”
Spoken like a true champion.
The Metcalf Mystery
Receiver D.K. Metcalf’s blazing 4.33 40-yard dash time and 1.9 percent body fat ratio at the NFL Combine sent him viral. Last year, USA TODAY reported that he was the grandson of former St. Louis Cardinals great Terry Metcalf. Apparently, this was incorrect.
Following the Combine, a report from the same newspaper said he is the son of former Chicago Bears lineman Terrence Metcalf and a cousin to Terry and his son, Eric Metcalf.
During my appearance on the Charlie Tuna Show on KFNS 590 om Monday, a caller brought this up and Tuna’s phone darn near exploded. Apparently, Terry Metcalf himself, and other people close to the situation, said that the men are not related.
It was an odd segment of sports radio, to say the least. I also could not locate a correction by USA TODAY from the story that ran last fall.
Metcalf’s Combine performance certainly boosted his stock in the draft and the former Mississippi receiver says he can become one of the NFL’s best.
“I see myself as the best receiver in this draft, because I’m a competitor and I’m going to compete every day,” he said.
“The 1 percent (of passes) that I’m not coming down with – it may be a bad ball by the quarterback.”
He compares himself to Atlanta receiver Julio Jones and retired Detroit Lions great Calvin Johnson – and he certainly doesn’t lack confidence.
The Reid Roundup
Cardinals outfielder Dexter Fowler collected two hits against Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer in a 3-2 win on Monday. One of the hits was a bunt single. Fowler had five hits in his last 18 at bats after the game. “He’s back to who he is, what kind of player he is,” said manager Mike Shildt. Fowler is hitting just .200 overall this spring… Fan and sports media darling, muscle guy Tyler O’Neill, hit three home runs against the New York Yankees last week and leads the team with four in spring training. O’Neill is hitting .250 and my guess is that he will start the season opener in Milwaukee, not Fowler… Speaking of Scherzer, a major Missouri booster I know confided that many a Tigers fan wishes Scherzer was more financially supportive of his former baseball team at Mizzou… Congratulations to the Vashon Wolverines for winning the Class 3 state championship with a 69-59 win over Springfield Catholic – in Springfield… NBA website writer Brandon Robinson at heavy.com penned last week that “a source who is in direct contact with the New Orleans Pelicans front office told me via text message, the Celtics have to include Jayson Tatum and Marcus Smart,” in any trade offer for Anthony Davis.
Alvin A. Reid was honored as the 2017 “Best Sports Columnist – Weeklies” in the Missouri Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest and is a New York Times contributor. He is a panelist on the Nine Network program, Donnybrook, a weekly contributor to “The Charlie Tuna Show” on KFNS and appears monthly on “The Dave Glover Show” on 97.1 Talk.” His Twitter handle is @aareid1.
